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Lava Pot Volcano

Classic image of volcanoes in fiction which does not resemble any real volcanoes.

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Volcanoes are some of the most impressive and dramatic setting devices in fiction. You've got the constant threat of eruption and the brilliant and deadly rivers of molten rock, a perfect place to set a climactic encounter. In fact, the journey up a towering mountain, which may be bursting with blasts of steam and explosive rock, to reach the top, where the ground is stripped away to reveal the glowing blood of the earth is practically an entire dramatic structure unto itself.

Except... we don't have any places like that on earth. The sorts of volcanoes which continually exude flowing lava are almost all shield volcanoes over active hotspots, such as the ones in the Hawaiian islands, which are wide and flat, and do not loom impressively in the background. And the only time volcanoes actually expose a core of molten lava at their peak is during or shortly after their eruption, after which the lava quickly cools and solidifies. In fact, successive explosive eruptions will often blast through different sections of a volcano each time. Rather than being open wounds in the earth, stratovolcanoes, the looming, explosive volcanoes that feature most heavily in fiction, are more like crusted over scabs, being essentially solid mountains on top of tectonic subduction zones.

However, since realistic volcanoes are insufficiently dramatic, and perhaps also because the most popular pictures of volcanoes are taken during eruptions, volcanoes in fiction tend to portrayed as full time seething lava pots.

The Volcano spell in Arcanists summons one of these underneath an enemy.

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[[folder:Western Animation]]

The mountain where the Panda Lily grows in Avatar: The Last Airbender: "The Fortuneteller" is a seething pot of lava. But apparently not all the time. Aang recognizes that it's near an eruption because it's a seething pot of lava.

The Simpsonssubverts this in the episode where they go to Japan and have to compete on a game show in order to win airline tickets back to the US. The tickets are on a Rope Bridge over an active volcano that looks like this - which turns out to be just a prop (unknown to the family).

The mountain where the Panda Lily grows in Avatar The Last Airbender: "The Fortuneteller" is a seething pot of lava. But apparently not all the time. Aang recognizes that it's near an eruption because it's a seething pot of lava.

The Simpsonssubverts this in the episode where they go to Japan and have to compete on a game show in order to win airline tickets back to the US. The tickets are on a Rope Bridge over an active volcano that looks like this - which turns out to be just a prop (unknown to the family).

Averted with the Red Mountain in Morrowind. First, it doesn't look like an ominous towering mountain, it's a relatively short and wide (the entire island of Vvardenfell is actually it) shield volcano, and the name Vvardenfell even means "shield-something". Second, it doesn't have a large lava pot at its crater. Most of the crater is simply a big pit where the Big Bad's lair is built, and the lava lake is relatively small. Actually, more lava is exposed through the cracks at Molag Amur (the most unstable slope of said volcano) than in the crater itself.

There are constantly "erupting" volcanoes, listed here, but even continually active volcanoes such as Mt. Stromboli do not usually expose liquid lava. Lava lakes doexist (there are four volcanoes that have maintained near continuous lava lakes for decades, the longest being Erta Ale at about 106 years, and three others that have been known to feature occasional lava lakes,) but even these are usually mostly solidified over. The world's single best example of a volcano resembling the ones in fiction is probably Mount Nyiragongo, whose crater is pictured here◊. Note that volcanoes are usually photographed at their most spectacular, not their most typical.

As an aside, the practice of throwing sacrifices into the caldera of a volcano has existed in real life, but the sacrifices were thrown into the water that had filled it.

^^^ Mount Doom is only one of these in the films. In the book, there is a magma reservoir, but it is underground, accessed by the Cracks of Doom, and not exposed. (Which is why they couldn't catapult or drop the ring into it)

Because of the way volcanos are generated in Dwarf Fortress, they almost always have this appearance when they break the surface. Typically, their "pool" will simply be the top of a very tall lava-pipe extending down to the magma sea deep underground. This can actually be a great boon to a fortress focused on metalworking, or to a very crafty fortress planner, a ready means of Killing Invaders With Magma.

I don't like the "on earth" thing. there are volcanos that aren't on earth. Venus is virtually covered with volcanic formations, (including at least one type that isn't found on earth, it looks kind of like a pancake). there are other planetary bodies that we know have signs of volcanos, some, like the moon Io, even still have active volcanos.

But yet the only volcanoes accessible to human explorers and thus familiar to readers/viewers of fiction are ones from Earth. Stuff that can only be explored by robots and telescopes does not usually end up in Fictionland unless it's diamond hard sci-fi.

if it is any setting besides earth one some volcanic formations not found on earth but found elsewhere in Real Life should be reasonable (depending on other factors, like does the planet have multiple tectonic plates).

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